In recent years, environmentally-friendly vehicles such as hybrid automobile, electric automobile, and fuel cell automobile draw attention. In the environment-responsive vehicles, a battery for supplying driving power to a driving motor being a power source is installed.
In such vehicle including the battery, as means for keeping a maximum output of the battery and extending the running distance when traveling only by the power of the battery, it is examined to install a plurality of batteries to increase the capacity of the battery.
In general, the battery is provided with a safety switch for breaking a high-voltage circuit and ensuring the safety at work when performing maintenance and the like. Performance of operation of turning off the safety switch opens (OPEN) the relay (main relay) and therefore breaks the high-voltage circuit. Similarly, also by performing operation of turning off (OFF) the ignition switch, the relay is opened (OPEN) to break the high-voltage circuit.
For example, even when an operator performs ON operation of the ignition switch by mistake during high voltage work, the high-voltage circuit can be broken when the safety switch is OFF.
A power supply control device, a method of starting a vehicle and a method of using a high-voltage power supply according to Patent Document 1 use, in a vehicle including a high-voltage power supply (battery), a power supply including a breaking member artificially breaking on the power supply side the output of the high-voltage power supply, in which a plurality of battery packs connected in series are installed and when a safety plug (safety switch) provided in any one of the battery packs is opened, the whole circuit is opened, and closure of a relay contact is inhibited upon detection of operation of the breaking member and then the inhibition is released especially upon detection of a drive operation.